Drinking From the Firehose Again (aka fandom stuff update)

[moragmacpherson]

Bunch of quick notes because I finally feel like I'm making actual progress on my Master's report but all sorts of stuff is going on in fandom and I haven't been keeping up.

1. Reena_jenkins posted two more of my Buffy/Doctor Who stories as podfics - Impossible Things and its sequel, Sitting, Waiting, Wishing. She is made of awesome and she did a fantastic job. [Link to podfics]

2. There's a Supernatural crossover comment!fic meme going on that really needs more love: twisted_yarns. I've posted two prompts and responded to one (you can probably guess which one is me, even though I've never written that particular crossover before). Go give it love! [link to the current prompt post]

3.  I'm up to three thousand words on my help_pakistan fic and have acquired a beta for it, the lovely jjhunter .  I should be able to finish under the deadline, which is good, although I've forgotten when the deadline is, which is bad.

4.  Speaking of jj, in exchange for her work, I'm beta-ing her very interesting Batman/BtVS story and having a blast talking meta with her.  The story's YAHF, not a genre I usually enjoy, but this one's an exception and it's incredibly thoughtful while also being funny and intriguing.  Good stufff: [Link to Knight of Faith]

5.  Very excited about the author claims post going up for the Supernatural reversebigbang.  I've had good luck writing stories based on art before (see item #1) and it'll be yet another notch on my (slowly growing) single-fandom bedpost.  On the other hand: just what I needed, another thing to write.  AAAAAACCCCKKKK!

That being said, back to Arab philosophy with me.  Al-Ghazali was such a card.

Comments

[jjhunter]

You're making me blush over here. As your beta, however, I must point that 'stuff' is only spelled with two f's.

Speaking of philosophy, I have been meaning to ask you for a reading list! I am ashamed to admit that I had to Google Al-Ghazali, and I'm curious which works/translations you would recommend as an introduction.

[moragmacpherson]

The extra 'f' is for FUN! ;^)

A good introduction to al-Ghazali would depend on your prior knowledge of Islam: he was a theologian, not a philosopher, and he essentially codified Sunni orthodoxy as we know it today. He was also a long winded fellow who was entirely too clever for his own good who studied neo-Platonism and then used Aristotelian logic to demonstrate that the concept of 'cause and effect' is a fallacy in a universe created by an omnipotent God in his magnum opus Tahafut al-Falsafayun "The Incoherence of the Philosophers." (That's the important one - while he wrote loads, most of it's fine theological detail work.)

I'm reading him in the original Arabic and he's... very convincing. There's a reason he won, whether I (or ibn Rushd) like it or not. The one translation I'm familiar with is available online, and it's not bad if sometimes a little literal (Classical Arabic rhetoric relies heavily on repetition and it can be tiresome for English readers). http://www.ghazali.org/works/taf-eng.pdf But even in English, the text requires a more than passing knowledge of the Qur'an and Sunni theology to follow it without serious difficulty. (Imagine trying to read Aquinas without ever having read the Bible) If you're not terribly familiar with the Qur'an let me know, and I'll try to find an Introduction to Islamic Thought text that I don't hate.

[jjhunter]

Reading the whole Qur'an is on my to-do list somewhere...yes, an intro text to get myself oriented would be lovely. And I'll go borrow the original from the library. /sheepish

[moragmacpherson]

There's no shame in putting off reading the Qur'an - it's a genuinely difficult text with lots of allusions to events happening in Mecca and Medina during the period of revelation that Westerners aren't familiar with. Oh, and it's not a prosaic narrative like the Bible but a poetic compilation that switches topics without warning. Not to mention reading it in translation isn't nearly as compelling as hearing the original Arabic (the poetry of the Qur'an is one of the proofs of its divine origins). Like I said: tough stuff (no extra f for fun here), but it is beautiful.

For translations of the Qur'an, I recommend Ahmed Ali's which has the translation side by side with the Arabic, and I also recommend reading the short chapters first - they're the ones in the back and are less legally/historically oriented, more mystical and cosmological. The chapters (suras) of the Qur'an are traditionally ordered by length rather than chronologically, a fact that Westerners find endlessly infuriating, but which means that if you start at the beginning you're dropped into the most complicated chapter (al-Baqqarah, "The Cow") almost immediately and I find students tend to get lost there. It would also be helpful to have a biography of Muhammad to refer to while reading: Watt's The Prophet Muhammad is the old Orientalist standby (he recounts it with a skeptical eye that isn't exactly respectful of sacred history), but there's also Tariq Ramadan's In the Footsteps of the Prophet which is written for Westerners by a pious Muslim and can give you some insight into modern (liberal) Islamic beliefs. (I'd recommend a reading guide, but all the ones I know are targeted at people who've already read it, which makes no sense but there you go.)

Yeah, it's a little intimidating. You might want to start with the intro texts first. I have a number of introductory texts from courses I've taken and courses I've TA'd. There's no intro to Islam text that's perfect, but if you read both Murata & Chittick's Vision of Islam (#ISBN-13: 978-1557785169) and Frederick Denny's An Introduction to Islam (ISBN-13: 978-0138144777) you'll be starting on good solid ground. Denny emphasizes the historical context while M&C go deeper into the cosmology. Both are truly introductory texts so they're very accessible.

They'll also introduce you to the Traditionalist(or Ashari) vs. Rationalist (Mu'tazali) debate that occurred between the 8th and 13th century among Sunnis, which pretty much ended with al-Ghazali winning it for the Traditionalists. Although ibn Rushd made an excellent defense for the Rationalists, he was never widely accepted in the Arab world (many of his works are no longer extant in the original Arabic) and was much more influential in Europe, where his commentaries on Aristotle brought neo-Platonism back into vogue, and eventually his influence on Spinoza and others would help to spark the Enlightenment.

Got it? ;^)

(Oh, and you'll notice I haven't even mentioned Shi'is: they're way more complicated than the Sunnis: there are dozens of different flavors of Shi'i.)

I do complain about people in the West not understanding Islam, but looking back on how much time I've invested in the task, I can maybe understand why most people can't be bothered.

[jjhunter]

That's very comprehensive; thank you! A reading guide would be good. Ulysses was much better on the second time through, and I suspect the same will be true of the Qur'an. Would you recommend just reading from the back (shortest) to the front (longest), or hopping around?

[moragmacpherson]

Hmmm... reading the first sura (al-Fatiha, "The Opening") is always a good place to start. It's kind of the Islamic equivalent of the Lord's Prayer and the Nicene Creed all wrapped up in seven divinely revealed lines. God's identification as King of the Last Day/Day of Judgment is especially important because Arab pagans didn't believe in an afterlife - and as the word "Allah" could refer to either either 'god' or 'God (of Abraham),' it was vowing that they believed in the Day of Judgment that identified early converts as Muslims. You'll notice this is a recurring theme.

While reading in general: it's a good idea keep track of who God's addressing (and except in al-Fatiha, God is the narrator): sometimes He's speaking directly to Muhammad, sometimes to the community of believers, sometimes to all of humanity, and sometimes to specific groups who may or may not be clearly defined, e.g. God spends a lot of time telling Muhammad's wives what to do.

After you've read al-Fatiha, I'd try reading the suras in the order of revelation, not just because the Meccan suras tend to be shorter and less daunting, but also because the Qur'an sometimes appears to contradict itself on certain issues: in these cases, whichever ayat (verse) was revealed the latest is accepted as the best expression of God's will, a concept called 'abrogation' (see verse 2:106). The general consensus chronological order is:

Meccan Suras (suras received while Muhammad and the early believers were living under pagan oppression in Mecca between 610 and 622, when Muhammad and his companions fled to Medina in order to escape an assassination attempt by the pagan city leaders (the Quraysh*)):

96; 68; 73; 74; 1; 111; 81; 87; 92; 89; 93; 94; 103; 100; 108; 102; 107; 109; 105; 113; 114; 112; 53; 80; 97; 91; 85; 95; 106; 101; 75**; 104; 77; 50; 90; 86; 54; 38; 7; 72; 36; 25; 35; 19; 20; 56; 26; 27; 28; 17; 10; 11; 12; 15; 6; 37; 31; 34; 39; 40**; 41; 42; 43; 44; 45; 46; 51; 88; 18; 16; 71; 14; 21; 23; 32; 52; 67; 69; 70; 78; 79; 82; 84; 30; 29; 83

* - Muhammad himself was Qurayshi, from the Hashimi branch, but the tribe and Mecca were largely controlled by the 'Abd Shams branch at the time; also, as an orphan, Muhammad was denied many tribal protections his father might have provided; note: the Qurayshi didn't dare to plot an assassination until after the death of Abu Talib - Muhammad's uncle, foster-father, and head of the Hashimis - in 619.)
** 618/619 - the year of sorrow when both Abu Talib and Muhammad's first wife died, occurs between the revelation of sura 75 and sura 40. After that year, the Quraysh are more aggressive in their persecution and Muhammad begins his polygamous lifestyle.

Medinan Suras (Suras revealed after the migration (hijra) of the community to Medina in 622 until Muhammad's death in 632. During this period, Muhammad was the head not just of the community of Muslims, but also of the entire city of Medina which included non-Muslims - God starts to send very specific policy points. Also, bear in mind: until the Quraysh surrendered Mecca in 628, they were in a constant state of war with the Muslims and the revelations often reflect this (Muhammad did forgive the one Quraysh lady who ate his uncle Hamza's liver after she surrendered and converted, but was less forgiving of the Jewish tribe that tried to betray Medina during a Quraysh siege)):

2*; 8; 3; 33;60; 4; 99; 57; 47; 13; 55; 76; 65; 98; 59; 24; 22; 63; 58; 49; 66; 64; 61; 62; 48**; 5; 9***; 110

* Surat al-Baqara - the cow - longest sura in the Qur'an, primarily revealed over the course of the first two years in Medina - called "the little Qur'an" because it sums many other themes.
** Surat al-Fath - the victory - revealed upon the surrender of Meccan Quraysh in 628.
*** Surat at-Taubah - Repentence: the only sura which does NOT open with the Bismillah ("In the name of God, the most benevolent, ever-merciful") for reasons which are readily apparent - it's a sura about war - more specifically, revealed while rumors swept the peninsula that the entire Byzantine Army was coming to wipe out the fledgling Muslim community in 630 (Muhammad marched into Syria with 30,000 men but never encountered the rumored Byzantine forces; there are no extant Byzantine records that mention such an invasion) Fundamentalists, both Islamic and Christian, love this chapter because it 'proves' that Islam cannot tolerate other religions (except that it can. Read carefully.)

[jjhunter]

The library copy cannot arrive soon enough. Thank you.

[moragmacpherson]

Not a problem. This is the reason I got into this field in the first place: to spread the knowledge.